extolled the Gospel Jesus and his teachings, but rejected the
notion of supernatural revelation. [1646] In a letter written so
late as 1822 to a Unitarian correspondent, while refusing to publish
another of similar tone, on the score that he was too old for strife,
he declared that he "should as soon undertake to bring the crazy
skulls of Bedlam to sound understanding as to inculcate reason into
that of an Athanasian." [1647] His experience of the New England
clergy is expressed in allusions to Connecticut as having been
"the last retreat of monkish darkness, bigotry, and abhorrence
of those advances of the mind which had carried the other States
a century ahead of them"; and in congratulations with John Adams
(who had written that "this would be the best of all possible worlds
if there were no religion in it"), when "this den of the priesthood
is at last broken up." [1648] John Adams, whose letters with their
"crowd of skepticisms" kept even Jefferson from sleep, [1649] seems
to have figured as a member of a Congregationalist church, while
in reality a Unitarian. [1650] Still more prudent was Washington,
who seems to have ranked habitually as a member of the Episcopal
church; but concerning whom Jefferson relates that, when the clergy,
having noted his constant abstention from any public mention of the
Christian religion, so penned an address to him on his withdrawal from
the Presidency as almost to force him to some declaration, he answered
every part of the address but that, which he entirely ignored. It is
further noted that only in his valedictory letter to the governors of
the States, on resigning his commission, did he speak of the "benign
influence of the Christian religion" [1651]--the common tone of the
American deists of that day. It is further established that Washington
avoided the Communion in church. [1652] For the rest, the broad fact
that all mention of deity was excluded from the Constitution of the
United States must be historically taken to signify a profound change
in the convictions of the leading minds among the people as compared
with the beliefs of their ancestors. At the same time, the fact that
they as a rule dissembled their unbelief is a proof that, even where
legal penalties do not attach to an avowal of serious heresy, there
inheres in the menace of mere social ostracism a power sufficient to
coerce the outward life of public and professional men of all grades,
in a democratic community where faith maintains and is maintained by
a competitive multitude of priests. With this force the freethought
of our own age has to reckon, after Inquisitions and blasphemy laws
have become obsolete.